ON THE MANAGEMENT OF GRASS LANDS IN ENGLAND. 121 



pastoral and tillage management. The English farmer has 

 several advantages over the Scotch. He can, for example, grow 

 forage crops for green food more successfully, and is thereby- 

 better enabled to meet the recjuirements of modern farming. 

 Eye, which makes capital green food, may be grown as a stubble, 

 or stolen crop, without interfering with any other crop. The 

 land may be seeded for 12s. or ICis. an acre ; and we have seen 

 it as forward at the beginning of March as some other green 

 crops are near the end of April. For ordinary farm live stock, 

 turnips may be sufficiently abundant in the spring months ; but 

 nothing can be more suitable for young lambs, (a stock that 

 demands the breeder's greatest care ) than the fine early grass 

 in the counties where water meadows prevail. Other green 

 crops are also cultivated for spring and summer soiling ; and at 

 a recent date Entield market cabbages have been tried, and 

 found to make capital sunnner keep, very useful in supplement- 

 ing the grazings when diminished by the drought of summer. 

 We have seen the pastures burnt up in a hot summer to a 

 degree which we believe is not often witnessed in the north. 

 Plants can no more live without water than an animal without 

 food, and a good crop is only got when a certain amount of rain 

 falls now and again. A dry hot summer brings the largest yield 

 of the staple crop of England ; but the pastures suffer much, as 

 may be inferred in looking at the temperature, and scanty rains 

 of the early summer, hence the necessity of providing other food 

 in addition to the grazings, to meet such summers as 1868, 1870, 

 and 1874. 



As to the difficulty of clothing an arable field with seeds, 

 England is not alone ; lor we are told that there are some 

 descriptions of soil in Scotland that do not take so readily to 

 .grass, nor retain it so well as could be wished, and that nothing 

 is more common than to see pastures in a thin and sickly state 

 •after the second and third year, especially on light and 

 secondary land. Like the stronger soils of the south, after 

 lying a year or two they become firm, consolidated, and show 

 a diminished bulk, as is well evinced when again broken up by 

 the plough ; but we think that kind of compression differs from 

 the tenacity of EngUsh clays, and does not offer the same 

 obstruction to the root-fibres of plants. This decadence is 

 probably due to the poverty of the land, and we understand 

 that on " eating " grounds, as they are called, great dressings 

 of lime and earth do not suffice to arrest this downward, and 

 apparently natural progress of things, and to raise the ground 

 from sterility to comparative fruitfulness. 



Good as are some of the pastures, not excepting some of the 

 soils that have a mixture of stubborn clays, we think, and in 

 this we do not claim exemption from error, that could the 



